1860s-ish. Ukraine and her little brother talk one evening. (some notes here)
“It’s harder than you think,” Russia says, sinking into an armchair. The rest of his empire is asleep, or ought to be; Ukraine’s just gotten back from another trip, this time as Russia’s envoy to Sadik in Istanbul – but that’s a whole different story.
She’s just closed the door behind her, shutting out the night. It’s warm, for early October, anyway. The Antonivka apples will be just starting to ripen back home. Ukraine shakes the damp fog from her shoulders and stamps the mud from her boots.
She decides to take the bait. “What is?”
And “Ruling,” Russia has the nerve to murmur, voice thick, staring at the chair across from him as if it’s a mile away.
Ukraine stops stock still for a moment, and crushes the breath out of her lungs with an iron fist. Calm, Irina, stay calm.
“Yes,” is what she decides on. Her little brother looks up then, as if only just noticing she’s in the room.
“Don’t look like that, dear sister,” he smiles (his eyes, the same odd misty color as Belarus’, are still far away: he’s not watching her, he’s watching something else through her.) “You bore that burden for a moment and then handed it to me for a lifetime. Don’t worry! I’ll carry it for you until my knees give out, sister; we are family.”
For a moment she’s angry again. Then the anger breaks inside her; not a wave breaking, but the sharp, quiet crack of a twig or a wishbone.
“You’re drunk,” Irina says, and settles into the chair across from him, laying her sabre across her lap.
“Sometimes ruling is easier that way,” her little brother tells her, pale eyelashes earnestly half-shut as he tips his head back. “But I am not. It’s kind of you to be concerned!”
They sit in silence. Ukraine swallows bitter rancor and reaches for the bottle standing, despite Vanya’s protests, half-empty at his side.
He demands her advice when he’s going over maps; he demands her blood when it comes to quelling rebellion in his territories (territories rebelling, like her); they spend the most time together – out on patrol or in his study or a brief “Braginskaya! To me” when he goes to the Winter Palace, to Tsarskoye Selo, as far, indeed, as Akmoly, as Bakhchysarai.
“It’s Braginskaya now,” she’d greeted the Cossacks of the Sich, when her atamans grinned and called her Chernenko. When the Sich was still standing, and there were still people alive who called her by her right name.
“It’s warm out,” Ukraine says to break the silence. “It was sunny all day coming up from Smolensk.”
“Bab’e leto,” Russia agrees. He points with his chin. “It’s why I laid a new fire.”
Ukraine hums her agreement. It’s tradition, for her brother anyway.
“And told Natasha to start new spinning, I imagine,” she mutters, giving in grudgingly to her impulse to ask. She doesn’t want to be a part of life here, but she is; they all are.
Russia looks confused for a moment. “What? Oh. No, I didn’t.” He takes a drink. “You know how it is with Natalya,” he jokes, uncertain, “she’s so quiet, sometimes it’s hard to remember she’s even there.”
She thinks the world of you, Irina refuses to say; she wants to be like you when she grows up. She thinks by being cold and ruthless and cynical that she is already like you. Fools, the both of you – you are both fools, and you are nothing alike.
“Mm,” she says again. They fall back into silence.
Russia takes another drink and swallows.
“It always gets warmer when you come back home,” he says. God’s teeth, are those tears in his eyes? Ukraine’s mouth twitches at the corner, a grimace not even trying to disguise itself as a sisterly smile, and looks hastily away, as if she’s staring into the flames. Vanya continues: “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you, Irina…”
The corner of Ukraine’s mouth twitches again.
“You? You’d be fine. Monologue to the wall instead.” She leans back. “Or to Laurinaitis, same difference.”
At that, Russia laughs. He reaches across to clasp her hand, the way soldiers do. His face is bright with mirth, but the grip is crushing.
“You do yourself a disservice to suggest you could be so easily replaced,” Vanya laughs as he squeezes her hand in his own. “You’re my older sister, my favorite sister, Irinochka! Laurinaitis is less than nothing compared to family.” He goes maudlin again, releasing her. “Didn’t I tell you all three of us would be together in the end? It’s how it was meant to be. No borders, no ‘autonomy’, no ‘dialects’…”
Irina swallows, hard.
At Pereyaslav, she’d shaken his hand, and he – he was younger then, a teenager who looked like a kid, with a fur coat and sad eyes that always looked a mile away, a mile ahead, towards some glorious future. She’d shaken Muscovy’s hand and accepted his protection because she needed it to survive and God how it’d stung but she’d done it, and he said “don’t worry, big sister; all three of us will be together in the end just like before, you’ll see,” and she held back her bitter tears until long after the delegation had left and told herself to trust in God and in a brother’s love to keep her separate and to keep her herself, and that anything was better than Poland, anything –
Before she’d left for Istanbul, she’d shoved notices banning their languages under Belarus’ nose, hoping against hope for some sign of outrage, of something. Belarus had looked at her with those cold, cold eyes, frozen through, and said in a voice that remained impressively steady, “Why should I be upset? If I were in power I’d do the same thing.”
Natasha, Ukraine had said, half-sad and half-angry, Natasha…
Belarus’ voice quivered, just a bit. In human years, she’s barely fourteen. “Why should I be upset?” she repeated, and, rising, left the room. The quiet whisper of her petticoats at the doorsill was the only sign that she’d been there at all.
Irina watches her brother in the half-light the same way he watches her, as if he’s a cutout or a silk screen set at the Mariinsky Theatre and there’s some other image behind.
“It’s late,” she says. Then: “Don’t you want to hear about Turkey?”
